My (M34) wife (F33) and I have a pretty good relationship with her parents (M65, F64). They are nice people, but they have one habit that drives me absolutely insane. Whenever they come to our house, whether it’s for dinner or to stay for the weekend, they are constantly on their phones.
I’m not talking about a quick check of messages. I mean they will sit on our couch, scrolling through Facebook or watching loud videos with the volume up for hours at a time. My wife and I will be trying to talk to them, and they’ll just give one-word answers, eyes glued to their screens. It feels less like we’re hosting family and more like we’re managing a waiting room. We’ve tried gently bringing it up (“Hey, let’s put the phones away and play a board game!”) but they just say “in a minute” and the minute never comes.
This past weekend, they were staying with us for two nights. After the first night of them barely speaking to us, I decided to try something different. On Saturday morning, before they woke up, I went into our router settings and “paused” their devices’ access to the Wi-Fi. I didn’t turn it off for us.
The effect was immediate. About 30 minutes after they came downstairs, my FIL started complaining that “the internet is down.” My MIL tried her phone and said the same. I just shrugged and said, “Huh, weird. It must be an outage in the area. It’s been spotty lately.”
AITA? Here’s where I might be. What followed was… kind of magical. We talked. We played three rounds of cards. We went for a walk. We cooked dinner together. It was the best, most engaged visit we have EVER had with them. It felt like I had my real family back.
The problem is, my wife found out what I did. I had to un-pause their devices before they left so they could look up directions, and she saw me in the router app. She is furious with me. She said I was manipulative, controlling, and treated her parents like children. She says I should have just been more direct or “sucked it up” instead of creating a lie and treating them with such disrespect.
I see her point, but I feel like my “manipulation” resulted in a genuinely positive outcome for everyone. We finally connected as a family, which is all I wanted. I feel like the small lie was justified by the result, but my wife is acting like I’m a monster.
So, Reddit, AITA for secretly turning off the internet to get my in-laws to spend time with us?
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My (M34) wife (F33) and I have a pretty good relationship with her parents (M65, F64). They are nice people, but they have one habit that drives me absolutely insane. Whenever they come to our house, whether it’s for dinner or to stay for the weekend, they are constantly on their phones.
I’m not talking about a quick check of messages. I mean they will sit on our couch, scrolling through Facebook or watching loud videos with the volume up for hours at a time. My wife and I will be trying to talk to them, and they’ll just give one-word answers, eyes glued to their screens. It feels less like we’re hosting family and more like we’re managing a waiting room. We’ve tried gently bringing it up (“Hey, let’s put the phones away and play a board game!”) but they just say “in a minute” and the minute never comes.
This past weekend, they were staying with us for two nights. After the first night of them barely speaking to us, I decided to try something different. On Saturday morning, before they woke up, I went into our router settings and “paused” their devices’ access to the Wi-Fi. I didn’t turn it off for us.
The effect was immediate. About 30 minutes after they came downstairs, my FIL started complaining that “the internet is down.” My MIL tried her phone and said the same. I just shrugged and said, “Huh, weird. It must be an outage in the area. It’s been spotty lately.”
AITA? Here’s where I might be. What followed was… kind of magical. We talked. We played three rounds of cards. We went for a walk. We cooked dinner together. It was the best, most engaged visit we have EVER had with them. It felt like I had my real family back.
The problem is, my wife found out what I did. I had to un-pause their devices before they left so they could look up directions, and she saw me in the router app. She is furious with me. She said I was manipulative, controlling, and treated her parents like children. She says I should have just been more direct or “sucked it up” instead of creating a lie and treating them with such disrespect.
I see her point, but I feel like my “manipulation” resulted in a genuinely positive outcome for everyone. We finally connected as a family, which is all I wanted. I feel like the small lie was justified by the result, but my wife is acting like I’m a monster.
So, Reddit, AITA for secretly turning off the internet to get my in-laws to spend time with us?
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1. I turned off WiFi for my in laws to prevent them being on the phone constantly.
2. I treated my in laws like I would, a 10 year old.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
ESH. They suck for being terrible guests that are on their phone all the time and you because you manipulated them and treated them like toddlers instead of really talking about it to them.
NTA. Your wife is, though, for not calling her parents out on their rude behaviour in the first place.
NTA. Honestly, the assholes are your in-laws, imo. You treated them like children? They behaved like ones! Spending your time glued to your phone, being an unresponsive brainwashed potato, that’s what teenagers are for, not grow ass retirees!
Good on them for staying young I guess, but if their old age is spent frying their brain to TikTok I’m not sure how long they’ll keep it working.
Seriously, what’s the point of visiting you, then?
You did well, it was smart, and you got to finally spend quality time with them.
Aw. This one makes me feel a bit sad.
I’d say NTA for trying it. No one is like… required to have access to wifi as a guest, and tbh just straight up announcing you were going to remove their access would have felt a lot more patronizing/disruptive/judgemental feeling than it simply ‘malfunctioning’.
It sounds like it’s worth trying to meet your wife halfway, though. That it was a moment of inspiration and you didn’t have time to fully think it through, you just wanted to see if it would affect anything.
Given that it did affect things in a positive way, you can conceed that she’s right and it’s something you’d like to address with them directly, given how much happier the visit was when they were able to focus their attention on the people they were visiting. Promise that you’re not intending on doing the same on future visits, that it’s a one-time thing.
(Whether that’s overtly turning off the wifi, above board, or simply talking to your IL’s about having dedicated phones-down time with them when they’re able to visit).